Free English Class! Topic: Shopping! 🏪🛒🛍️ (Lesson Only)

Well hello and welcome to this English lesson about shopping.

Shopping is something that we all do in order to live in

order to go through your day. You have to buy things every

once in a while. We need to buy food. We need to buy clothes.

We need to buy houses if we live in houses. Um we have to

buy a car if we need to drive to work. So shopping the act of

taking your money and exchanging that money for

something is very very common. These are usually very popular

English lessons. Whenever I talk about shopping people are

quite interested. So please enjoy this lesson about

shopping where you'll learn lots of words and phrases that

we use as English speakers when we go shopping. Before we get

started I do want to mention there is a study pack for this

lesson. If you go to Bob the Canadian. com you can find that

study pack and there's also a link in the description below.

That study pack has As all of the original slides. A

crossword puzzle, a word search, a matching activity, a

multiple choice activity. It has a lot of support materials

that you can use as an independent English learner or

if you're an English teacher you can use them in your

classroom. So if you're interested please head over to

Bob the Canadian. com and look for that. So the general term

for someone who buys things is shopper. When you go to the

mall you will see lots of shoppers. Um when I go to the

I'm a shopper. So a shopper is a person who is engaged in the

act of shopping. So if I take my wallet I seem to have lost

my wallet. Oh it's over there. And I go to a store and I buy

something I am a shopper. Um I'm similar to the person in

the chat. I think it was right winter. I don't go to the mall

without knowing what I want to buy. So I'm a very focused

shopper. I don't just wander around and buy things randomly.

But the who buys things is a shopper. And there's two ways

to talk about the act of shopping. We can say shop like

you just the verb to shop or to go shopping. So I could say

this. Tomorrow I'm going to shop at the mall or tomorrow

I'm going to go shopping at the mall. Both sentences work. Both

are completely correct. And this is the verb we use to talk

about buying things. So if you go to the mall you're going to

the mall to shop. Or you're going to mall to go shopping.

We also sometimes say to do some shopping. I need to do

some shopping this weekend. I need new shoes and a new pair

of shorts. Now there's a few different kinds of shopping.

And we just add the word in front to describe it. If I need

food I go grocery shopping. So I go to the grocery store or

supermarket. And I go grocery shopping. I might say to Jen I

need to do a bit of grocery shopping after school today. Is

there anything we need? If I need clothes I would go clothes

shopping. Jen and the kids really like going clothes

shopping. I think everyone likes to have new clothes. So

we go clothes shopping. Not a lot. But it's probably one of

the more common things that we shop for. So if you need food

you go food shopping or you go grocery shopping. Sorry if you

go grocery shopping. If you need clothes you go clothes

shopping. If you need a car you can actually go car shopping as

well. So car shopping is something that you do when you

need to buy a car. You might go to a couple of different places

to look at the cars they have. We call those places car

dealerships. So you might go to three or four different car

dealerships on a Saturday to do some car shopping. You're going

to figure out which car you want. You're going to decide

which car you are going to buy. So notice as well shopping

doesn't always involve actually buying something. So I can go

shopping at the mall and come home and say I bought some

shoes. I can also go shopping at the mall and come home and

say I didn't buy anything. So both are equally correct. So I

guess you don't technically have to buy something to be to

go shopping. And then you can go house shopping. Um so if you

want to buy a house you don't buy the first house you see. In

Canada you would call someone called a realtor. And a realtor

is someone who will take you and show you different houses.

They will take you house shopping. And then you can see

few different houses. You can decide on what house you like

and you can buy one that you feel comfortable living in. So

very nice. Jen and I didn't ever do this. We didn't go

house shopping because we bought our house from my mom.

And then there's of course online shopping. A relatively

new kind of shopping. Online shopping is shopping that you

do on your computer. Uh or on your phone. Um so you decide

you need to buy concert tickets. You go on your phone

and you buy concert tickets. Maybe you want to buy a new

computer. So you go on your phone and you do some online

shopping and you buy a new computer. So online shopping

another way to spend money to buy things. Now I should have

changed this picture. I should have found a picture with paper

grocery bags. In Canada when you buy groceries when you buy

food at the grocery store or supermarket they now put them

in paper bags or you need to bring your own bags. I always

bring my own bags. We do not have plastic grocery bags in my

part of Ontario Canada anymore. They're just not allowed. So we

decided that plastic bags are not allowed anymore. There are

no plastic bags. So I should have changed this picture to

something a little more current. Now if you go to the

grocery store if you need bags they will give you paper bags

and they will charge you 10 cents for each bag. So you do

have to pay for the bags now. We're doing it for the

environment. Um plastic bags are not good for the

environment. We also have shopping bags. And there's less

of these now too. People are more likely to just carry their

items. Or people might get one bag at the first store they

shop at. One shopping bag. And then use that for the rest of

their shopping trip. We'll do that sometimes. We'll buy

something at a store at the mall and they'll give us a big

shopping bag. And then at each each store we go to after that

we'll just keep putting the things in the first shopping

bag because we don't need well like this lady has too many

shopping bags. That stuff could have all fit in one or two bags

I think and I think that would have been a little bit better.

Then of course we have price and you find the price on the

price tag. So the price is what the vendor or store or sales

person has decided they want to sell the item for. How much

money they want for the item. So if you look here this kale

is $2 or three for 5 dollars. That's a pretty good price

actually. Um you eat kale. It's quite healthy by the way. We

grow kale in our garden along with the flowers. Um and then

we usually let it freeze once or twice outside before we

harvest it. But anyways price is what you pay for an item.

And if it is a tag like if it's hanging like this. This is just

the price written on a card or a piece of paper. But this is

an actual price tag. A little piece of paper hanging from the

article of clothing or hanging from the thing that you want to

buy telling you how much it costs. And then if you want to

pay you can pay with cash or money Um we use the word cash a

lot in my part of the world. So Jen might say hey do you can

you pay for this? Do you have cash on you? And what she's

saying is do you have actual like bills in your wallet? Do

you have $5 bills, $20 bills, $50 bills? And I'll say yeah

yeah I have money. I brought money with me or I have cash.

The other way to pay is of course with a gift card. So a

gift card is a card for a specific store and it basically

has a certain amount of money on it. I actually have an

Amazon gift card. I have one right here. I'm not going to

show you the back because if I think if you can see the code

you could steal it. So this is an Amazon gift card. Hopefully

this focuses. And it says on the back 0$25, Well it's not

bad. Sometimes my kids give me Amazon gift cards. Um like they

get them as a gift and then I order something from Amazon. I

do some online shopping. And then they give me the gift card

to pay me back. You can also pay with a credit card or a

debit card. And these work slightly differently. A credit

card basically they send you a bill every month. A debit card

takes the money straight from your bank account and gives it

to the store. So let me repeat. If you have a Visa card or a

Mastercard when you use that pay by sliding it or tapping it

or inserting it and punching in your code you are actually

visa's actually paying for your stuff and then Visa charges you

interest and you have to pay them back. A debit card the

money simply comes straight out of your bank account. It's

always better to pay with a debit card. Cos then you're not

borrowing money in order to buy something. Coupons are pieces

of paper that help you get a deal or something cheaper at a

store. So there might be a coupon in a newspaper or on a

in a flyer and it simply says 25% off. Bring this coupon to

the store. Buy whatever you want. We'll give you 25% off.

When you're buying things online there often can be

discount codes. If you punch this discount code in you will

get a certain percentage off. Or you can buy two things for

the price of one with an a discount code. Grocery store at

supermarket. So we use both words here in Canada. When you

talk about the store that you go to to buy food we would call

it a grocery store or a supermarket. I often use the

word grocery store. I think it might be very Canadian. I know

I'm going to say on the supermarket. In French I think

you say Super Marche which is the French equivalent of

supermarket. Um if someone says the word supermarket I know

what they mean. It's just not a word that I use very commonly.

I often just say grocery store. Hey I'm going to go to the

grocery store today. Um hey kids I'm going the grocery

store after work. Is there anything you want me to buy? We

also have malls which are that's the short form for

shopping mall. A shopping mall is a large building with many

many stores inside. Shopping malls by the way are really

nice places to go in the winter in Canada. When it's minus 20

degrees outside it can be fun to just go to the shopping mall

to do some shop To shop to go shopping. Um even if you don't

need to buy anything or what to buy anything because they're

big enough that you can you can walk quite a bit like you can

walk if you walked the entire shopping mall. It might be a

whole kilometer of walking. So I have in the past on really

cold days if I want to get some steps in for my fitness

tracker. I might go with Jen to the mall and do some walking.

But a mall sometimes has two floors or three floor You can

see here there's an escalator that people are going up and

down. Um and a mall just has like 100 or 200 stores. It's a

great place to go if you need to go to a variety of stores to

buy things. You go to the shopping mall or what we just

usually call the mall. So some people ask sometimes what's the

difference between a store and a shop? So in North America

stores are generally bigger. When I use the word shop I'm

often talking about like a nice little store in a town. Um but

that being said it is interchangeable. You could say

there's some really cute shops at the mall. There's some

really cute stores at the mall. So again for me as a Canadian

and I think in North America stores Usually means something

a bit bigger and a shop is something a little bit smaller.

Um the street where the farmers market is. There's a there's

some nice shops on that street. There's also some big stores on

that street. So it's not a hard and fast rule. Like it's just

kind of how Bob uses it. But I wouldn't use the word shop to

talk about a really really big store that sells tools. I would

call that a store. A hardware store actually. So for me store

and shop have to do with size. I think in the UK shop is a

more common way to talk about stores. So shopping cart. By

the way this is called a trolley I think in the UK. If

you're learning British English you're on the wrong channel.

But that's okay. You can stay. We call this a shopping cart or

a grocery cart or just a cart. So when I go to the grocery

store I go and get a cart. I go get a grocery cart before I

start shopping. Now you are probably familiar though with

the word shopping cart. Or the word because when you do online

shopping we still use this term. When you buy something on

Amazon it goes into your shopping cart. It goes into

your cart. Uh even though it's a virtual cart. Um but yes I

would call this a shopping cart again if you are on the other

side of the Atlantic. If you are in Britain you would

probably call this a trolley. I think that's what they call it.

We just call it grocery cart. Seems simpler to me. When you

go to a store it's always fun when things are on sale or when

the store has a sale. Let me use those two terms again. A

store can have a sale. So you might say oh that store is

having a sale. A lot of stuff is on sale. So notice I'm using

it differently. The store has a sale. There is a sale at that

store. The stuff in the store is on sale. Usually in Canada

all of the summer clothing is on sale in September. They know

that it's hard to sell bathing suits and T-shirts in the

winter. And in the a lot of the winter clothing is on sale. The

store will have a sale and the winter clothes will be on sale

in March and April. Because they would rather sell the the

winter clothes instead of keeping keeping all the winter

clothes through the summer. So this has a lot of names. But

when you are at a store or shop when you are done shopping you

need to pay for things. So you need to find the till or the

checkout or the register or the cash register or the counter or

the front counter. We have a number of different words for

it. The most common is probably checkout, okay? So, if I was

buying, let's see here. If I was buying this pair of

glasses, I would need to find the till or the checkout or the

cash register or the front counter in order to pay for

these. And the most common word would be checkout. And it's

also the verb. Oh I need to checkout. I need to find the

checkout I can checkout. Usually though you would say I

need to find the checkout so I can pay for all of this stuff.

Um yeah. Welcome to English. Sometimes there's lots of

different words for things. Uh and then now we have this is

where the updated part of the lesson comes in. We have a lot

more stores with self checkout. This is becoming more and more

common in Canada. Almost every grocery store that I go to now

has self checkout. Okay. Self checkout is when you walk up to

one of these machines which we call the self checkout machine.

Or just the self checkout. And then you scan your items

yourself. So you go like beep and then you put it on the on

the on the little I think a scale. I think these machines

weigh everything and then the machine knows if you're lying

or cheating. Um but self checkout is becoming much more

popular in Canada. Um we see it almost in every grocery store

now. I I don't mind it. It's if you're in a hurry it's kind of

nice. And there's also stores. Now I have not seen a store

like this. But I watched a video maybe these are more

popular in Europe and other parts of the world where when

you go grocery shop You get a cart and you get a scanner and

as you shop you scan the items with the scanner and then at

the end you you just pay and you're done. Like it's kind of

a different way of doing self checkout. Kind of similar

though. If you have this in your country. Let me know in

the chat if you use scanners in your country. And then there's

two kinds of people at a store. There's a cash here. This is

the person who works at the checkout. The person who works

at the till. And then we have a store clerk. This is someone

who helps you in the store. So if you are done shopping you go

to the checkout and the cashier will ring up we still use that.

I never thought about that. She'll ring up your total.

There's no ringing anymore. But she will scan each item and

tell you how much money you need to pay. If though I am in

a clothing store or I'm in a grocery store and I can't find

something. I might ask a store clerk. I'm at I might ask a

clerk to help me find the bananas for instance. Hey could

you tell me where the bananas are? That's something I might

say to a clerk. So the cashier will check you out. The cashier

will ring in or scan in all your items and then tell you

how much you owe and the clerk will help you find things. Now

Jen and I talked about this one. We often just refer to a

clerk as a worker. Like if I'm in a store and if I have a

question I might say have you seen a worker? Um if you see a

store worker let me know and I because I want to ask them

something. But clerk is definitely the correct term for

sure. Receipt. So a receipt is a piece of paper you get after

you buy something. Some stores now send you a receipt via

email. But usually when I go to my grocery store when I'm done

buying groceries they give me a little piece of paper. It comes

out of the cash register and they hand it to me and it tells

me how much money I spent and it has a list of all the things

that I buy. When I go to the grocery store and get groceries

and also buy myself a chocolate bar sometimes Jen looks at the

receipt later in the day and she says you bought a chocolate

bar? Did you get me one? So it's important to know what to

do with your receipt. Also when I buy something for our

business I keep the receipt because we want to enter the

amount we spent into our accounting software when you

run a business it's important to keep your receipt so if the

government ever asked you what you spent you would have proof

of what you spent and then you want to keep it as well in case

you want to do a return or an exchange if you buy flowers

from us and if they die the next day which never happens.

You should come back to market the next week and we will

either give you a return. We will give you your money back

or you can exchange it for a new bouquet of flowers. This

happens quite regularly. I actually had a pair of shoes

once and when I bought them, they didn't fit. I bought them

online and they were the right size but they still felt really

tight. So, I brought them to the actual store. The store

sells online and they have a store and I return them and

they gave me my money back. I wanted to exchange them for a

pair that was a little bit bigger but they didn't have

them. So a return is when you bring it back and they give you

money. An exchange is when you bring it back and they give you

something else from the store. Shoes are a great example. If

you buy size nine and a half and they don't fit you might

want to exchange them for size ten. And you should bring your

receipt by the way. If you don't have your receipt, you

can't return or exchange stuff. Sometimes, you just want a

refund, okay? So, a refund is the name we give for when they

give you money back. So, when you return something, they give

you a refund. When you buy something, you give them money.

When you return something, they give you a refund. They give

you your money back. Sometimes, customers get angry in a store

and they want to refund. They demand a refund. Like I want a

refund. This is ridiculous. This shoe broke the first time

I wore it. I'm never buying shoes here again. That's what

an angry customer might say. When we talk about hours we're

talking about not just when the stores open during the day but

what days they're open. So if someone said to Jen and I what

are your hours? Actually we don't have hours. Let me let me

give a better example. If I went to the hardware store and

I said to the store clerk what are your hours? He would say oh

we're open Monday through Saturday eight to 6. So you can

see here opening hours Tuesday to Friday 7: 30 AM to 5PM

Saturday 8AM to 5PM so again we use the word hours but it

refers to the days and the time during those days that a store

is open some stores are open twenty-four hours there you go

we also have delivery and shipping let me kind of explain

the difference here delivery is the act of bringing something

to someone's house or apartment okay so when you order pizza it

comes with free delivery They bring it to your house. Um the

act of coming in your driveway walking up to your door and

giving you a pizza is delivery. Okay. So when you buy a

mattress sometimes you need delivery because the mattress

doesn't fit in your car. And so you need delivery. Shipping is

similar. Shipping is when something leaves a store and

the time from when it leaves your store to when it gets to

your house. That's the shipping process. And so we kind of use

these interchangeably though. They're very very similar. In

fact sometimes you get free delivery. Sometimes you get

free shipping and it means the same thing. Okay. But generally

delivery is the act. Like when the person is at my house he's

making a delivery. But when I pay for shipping I'm paying for

the item to leave the store travel down the road and come

to my house. I didn't explain that very well. They are kind

of the same thing. But there is kind of a slight difference.

Maybe someone in the chat can explain it a little bit better.

But sometimes something is too big and you need to pay for

delivery or you need to pay for shipping. Sometimes you want to

buy some clothes. Maybe you need to buy a new pair of

pants. You need to buy a few shirts and you go to a clothing

store to do some clothes shopping. And you want to try

things on. And so you would ask where are the fitting rooms or

where are the change rooms. So a fitting room is a small place

like this where you can go and take your shirt off and put on

the new shirt and see how it fits. Look in a mirror and see

how it looks and then decide if you want to buy it or not. Uh

then at the mall sometimes you are hungry. And so malls have

what are called food courts. So a food court is a place where

there are many restaurants and lots of tables and chairs to

sit at. And you can decide oh today I'd like a hamburger.

Today I'd like a wrap. Today I'd like french fries with

gravy. Today I'd like pizza. Today I'd like some samosas.

Today I'd like an empanada. Today I'd like to have some

pierogies. There's so many options at a food court. So you

kind of low and decide hm what looks the best. What am I

craving when you crave something it's what you want to

eat. And then you order it. Usually when I go to the food

court I usually get pizza. Sometimes I get a hamburger. Uh

and then a couple of terms to finish off here in stock and

out of stock. Let me make these a little bit bigger. When a

store has something in stock it means that they have that item.

Okay so you can see here this cleaner is in stock. If you

look at the shelf you can see that there are bottles of

cleaner there. Above though there are no bottles. So they

are out of stock. So when something is in stock it means

it's something the store sells and they have it in the store.

When it's out of stock it's something the store normally

sells but they don't have any in the store at this time. So

when something goes on sale the store sometimes has lots of

that item in stock. But sometimes something's on sale

and then very quickly they're out of stock. They just don't

have anymore. It's disappointing when you go to a

store to buy something that's on sale and they say sorry

we're out of stock or we sold out this morning that would be

another way to put it. Uh and then you can of course ask for

something called a rain check. That means when the product is

back in stock you can come and pay the price that you would

have paid when it was on sale. Anyways when something's in

stock it means they have it. When something's out of stock

it means they no longer have it. They have sold out. There

are none left on the shelf.